"No more excuses" for staying away from the office, says Jacob Rees-Mogg
12 October 2022, 08:23
Jacob Rees-Mogg told LBC today that there can be no more "excuses" for workers not getting back to their desks.
The business secretary told Nick Ferrari the percentage of people back working at their desks in his department was "getting better", but admitted he didn't have the exact figure to hand.
He said: "Certainly looking at my new dept at BEIS there seem to be plenty of people. I don’t have the latest figure.
"I don’t want to guess at a figure, we're publishing figures so that will come out. People do need to be back at work.
"These figures... have been improving. There were endless excuses as to why it was exceptional this week, it was too hot, it was too cold, it was easter, it was a Jubilee.
Rees-Mogg: Civil Servants have no more excuses to not be at their desk
"I think we’ve now run out of excuses and we need efficient and effective government which requires people to be at their desks," he said.
Earlier this year Mr Rees-Mogg spearheaded a drive to get civil servants to office buildings - saying he wanted them at “full capacity.”
In a letter to ministers in April, he wrote: ““Now that we are learning to live with Covid and have lifted all legal restrictions in England, we must continue to accelerate the return of civil servants to office buildings to realise the benefits of face-to-face, collaborative working and the wider benefits for the economy.”
He was also accused of being “condescending” to workers by leaving notes deemed to be passive-aggressive on civil servants’ desks in an effort to stop them working from home.
